This is an improvement over my U.S. Pat. No. 3,276,711 issued Oct. 4, 1966 for Unwind Stand for Web Rolls.
The purpose of this invention is basically the same as that enumerated in my previous patent. This is to facilitate the picking up and handling of large heavy rolls of paper from the floor and transferring them to a point where they can be fed into machines for further processing, such as corrugators and the like. The stand positions the rolls in alignment with the machine for further processing of the paper and maintains the paper in a state of tension as the roll unwinds and is fed into the machine.
As before, this invention obviates the necessity of using an overhead crane and lift truck to transport the paper to a stand, since the features of lifting and transporting are incorporated in my present machine which is so movable as to transport the rolls.
By use of the present machine, the rolls therefore may be conveniently transported to align with the subsequent processing machine.
In this invention, as in the previous one, I use a central hydraulic sourc of power which operates the movement of the carriage of my machine on which are positioned a pair of lifting arms, also hydraulically operated, to clamp the roll at its ends and raise it up to the proper position and transporting it to a point in alignment with a machine for the next operation.
In my previous invention one of the lifting arms was transversely fixed on the tranvelling control cab of my machine while the other one was capable of longitudinal-motion driven from the cab to effect the clamping of the roll. It was then necessary to move the entire machine so that it was in alignment with one end of the roll as represented by the fixed arm. The longitudinally movable arm was then separately operated to effect the clamping against the first arm prior to effecting the lifting of the roll.
This type of operation was somewhat cumbersome insofar as effecting the original alignment between the machine and the roll ends as the roll was resting on the floor. While my previous machine solved many of the existing problems in handling these rolls and holding them in position for processing, it did not provide the complete flexibility which could be attained if both the arms were independently movable in a longitudinal direction independent of each other and independent of the motion of the whole machine.